Your baby is on the way, and there is a lot to think about.
Besides making sure that you have baby furniture and clothing for your new son
or daughter, you'll want to check that your home is safe.
About 2.3 million children are accidentally injured every
year and more than 2,500 are killed, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention. That's why it's so important to carefully childproof
your home
Your baby will be crawling before you know it. Most babies
begin crawling around six to nine months. Crawling on your hands and knees will
reveal many dangers to your baby.
Thinking ahead to the toddler years will help
you to take care of other hazards before your baby grows and finds them first.
Here are some things to do before your baby is crawling
- Cover all unused electrical sockets with outlet plugs.
- Keep chords out of baby's reach. Tack up chords to vertical blinds and move furniture, lamps, or electronics to hide chords.
- Secure furniture and electronics, such as bookcases and TVs, so they cannot be pulled down on top of your baby.
- Use protective padding to cover sharp edges and corners, such as from a coffee table or fireplace hearth.
- Install safety gates at the bottom and top of stairwells or to block entry to unsafe rooms.
- Use safety latches on cabinets and doors.
- Store all medicines, cleaning products, and other poisons out of baby's reach.
- Remove rubber tips from doorstops or replace with one-piece doorstops.
- Look for and remove all small objects. Objects that easily can pass through the center of a toilet paper roll might cause choking.
- Keep houseplants out of baby's reach. Some plants can poison or make your baby sick.
- Set your water heater temperature to no higher than 125 degrees Fahrenheit. Water that is hotter can cause bad burns.
- Closely supervise your baby around a family pet. Pets need time to adjust to a new baby.
